


burning down the dark

by Morcai



Series: Eternal Flame [1]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Abduction, Alternate Universe - Magic, Amnesia, Amnesiac POV Character, Multi, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 21:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1137627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morcai/pseuds/Morcai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magic!AU</p><p> </p><p>
  <i>It started with Musichetta saying she would be meeting her grandmother for lunch, that she would be fine without her boyfriends hovering.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>It ends with Joly and Bossuet silent on Combeferre’s floor while the mage’s power fills the room, pressure and connection, and Bossuet can almost hear her laugh before the atmosphere vanishes with an audible snap and Combeferre flinches as if slapped.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	burning down the dark

It started with Musichetta saying she would be meeting her grandmother for lunch, that she would be fine without her boyfriends hovering.

It ends with Joly and Bossuet silent on Combeferre’s floor while the mage’s power fills the room, pressure and  _connection,_ and Bossuet can almost hear her laugh before the atmosphere vanishes with an audible  _snap_  and Combeferre flinches as if slapped.

"Someone’s got a shield up over her," he says, and he sounds dazed. "I got a hint, but whoever put that shield up doesn’t want her found."

_She wakes up and she doesn’t know where she is. Standing is hard—her mind is fuzzy and it’s hard to keep her feet, but she manages. There are an awful lot of trees, and she wonders how she got there._

_Not the point right now._

_She leans against a tree for a moment, waiting for her head to stop spinning. It doesn’t, but her legs feel a little less like they’re going to go out from under her, so that’s something. After that, she picks a direction and starts walking towards the lights she can see through the trees._

"Does that mean she left?" Joly asks, and his knuckles are white. Bossuet thinks the hand Joly’s holding might break, but he’s holding on just as tightly, so at least they’d go to the hospital together.

Combeferre shakes his head, and the motion is sharp. He’s already shaking off whatever it was that hit him. Instead, it looks like he’s starting to get angry.

"Give me a moment and I’ll show you the trace." Combeferre stands, brushing off his jeans, and looks them both in the face. "Whatever happened, Musichetta didn’t mean to leave you two."

_It’s hard to judge time as she stumbles through the woods, but she doesn’t think it’s more than ten or fifteen minutes before she reaches a clear space. The lights are further on ahead, through more woods, but she leans over, bracing her hands on her knees, and just breathes for a moment._

_Too occupied with focusing on not falling over, on breathing and trying to remember how she ended up in the woods, she doesn’t hear the oncoming engine until it’s far too close._

_When she does realize it’s there, she lunges out of the way, but the car catches her hip and she goes tumbling into the ground, and the world goes black._

Combeferre leaves the room for a moment, before returning with his laptop balanced on one arm. Sitting back down, he looks them all over, Joly and Bossuet huddled together, seated on the floor. Enjolras in the middle of the kitchen, carefully not touching anything and glowing slightly, with Courfeyrac seated on a nearby counter, shooting off furious texts.

"I think I can manage to pull the last traces through the laptop," Combeferre says, and opens Paint and a sound editing program, "but it’s not going to be exactly the same, and what I got following the trace was ugly."

He takes off his glasses and rubs his forehead before replacing them and trying to compose himself. He doesn’t succeed, and Bossuet wonders what it was that Combeferre found that’s left him so angry and so rattled. 

"Do it," Joly says, and his voice is rough. Bossuet presses his cheek to his boyfriend’s hair and tries to ignore the way that both of them are trembling.

_She wakes up to the sound of beeping and people speaking over her._

_Opening her eyes, she can tell she’s in a hospital bed and she tries to sit up, but there’s a gentle hand on her chest, urging her to lie down._

_"Miss, do you know where you are?" the man holding her down asks._

_"I’m in a hospital, right?" she says, and the man smiles a little and lets her go._

_"Good. Can you tell what happened? You were found on a back road, but the man who brought you in said he’d never met you before."_

_She frowns, trying to draw all of the dizzy memories together. “I was…in the woods. And I started walking, and I guess I walked into the road? It was dark, and I was catching my breath…I think someone hit me?”_

_The man nods. “Your injuries are consistent with being hit by a car, along with probably being out all night. Can you tell us your name? You didn’t have any identification on you.”_

_She frowns again, harder this time. Her name? What is her name?_

_Why is this so much harder than remembering what happened? Names should be easy, what’s her name? what is her_ name _?_

_"I don’t remember." It’s terrifying and she grabs the front of the man’s scrubs. "Why don’t I remember? I should know my own name, but I don’t! I know the president and I know that someone hit me but I don’t know my name!"_

_"Miss, Miss, I need you to calm down," the man says, and he must be a nurse, of course. She feels stupid for not realizing that earlier. But her_ name _, and she tries to remember her childhood, or where she lives or what her mother looks like and she_ can’t _, just the same blankness._

Combeferre works with a blank face, pressure and connection descending, though this time there is no phantom of Musichetta’s laugh, of her lips against his forehead. Bossuet carefully does not wish for that back.

The sound program records, sounds spiking and falling, though the apartment is silent. Eventually the recording stops spiking, and the atmosphere of Combeferre’s power dissipates, slowly this time, and Combeferre opens his eyes.

"Are you sure you want to hear this?" he asks, fingers hovering over the touchpad.

Joly nods sharply, and Combeferre clicks, and his mouth is a flat line.

It’s barely anything, a fragment of Musichetta’s voice, twisted as none of them have ever heard before, a snarl of barely coherent rage, “ _You have no fucking ri—”_

It cuts off and Bossuet can’t help the pained noise he lets out. 

_She tries to sit up and her vision goes white for a moment, and she hisses, the pain too sudden to do much more._

_"Please, keep calm," the nurse says, trying to get her to lie back down. "You’ve fractured your femur, the surgeon just put in the nail to keep the bone together."_

_She doesn’t lie back down, but the pain keeps her from panicking more over her missing memories. Instead she tries to think to focus._

_"My femur?" she asks, and she should know what that means, of course she should, it’s just on the tip of her tongue, but she doesn’t quite._

_"When the car hit you, it probably clipped your leg. It’s not a bad fracture, but without the nail, it’d take a very long time to heal, and you wouldn’t be able to walk around at all."_

_Right. Femur, the first bone of the leg. Of course. She smiles at the nurse, but it’s shaky and both of them know it._

_"I think I’d like to go back to sleep now," she says, carefully. "Is there any reason I shouldn’t?"_

_He blinks for a second, then smiles. “No, just be careful of your IV—” and funny she hadn’t even noticed it before, “—and if you need anything, just press that button and either I or one of the other nurses will come help you out okay?”_

_She nods and he leaves her alone in the room. Settling herself back into the bed, she almost feels like crying._

Joly’s breath hitches as if he’s about to start to cry, and Combeferre looks terribly compassionate. Bossuet feels as though he’s floating above himself, one hand white-knuckled in Joly’s the other clenched into a fist, so tight he wouldn’t be surprised if his nails drew blood.

"Can you do anything?" he asks, and his voice shakes. Musichetta is  _gone_  someone took her from them, someone  _hid_  her, against her will, and there is something deep inside Bossuet that  _snarls_  at the thought.

"I—maybe," Combeferre says, rubbing a hand over his mouth. "I’m not sure. Give me a few days to work, and I’ll text you when I know something?"

Bossuet nods.

_She spends three days in the hospital, learning to use crutches and always having to remember that her name with the nurses and doctors is “Jane” however much it doesn’t feel like it belongs to her. Everyone tells her that they’re doing their best to find her family, because familiar faces will help her remember. She just smiles and nods, and can’t help but feel like they’ll never find anyone, that wherever her family is, they won’t find her._

_She’s proven wrong near the end of visiting hours on that third day, when a woman, old but still beautiful, is shown into her room and immediately bursts into tears._

_"Marielle! Oh Marielle, I was so worried!" the woman exclaims, one hand to her mouth, and it feels so strange to have someone in tears over her._

_"I’m sorry, who are you?" she asks, because it’s rude to call people crazy._

_"You don’t remember me?"_

_She frowns slightly. What is this woman doing in her room? “I have amnesia. I don’t…I don’t remember anything.”_

_The old woman seems to deflate. “I suppose that’s what the nurses meant by ‘complications’.” she says. “Marielle, I’m your grandmother.”_

_Marielle. She tastes the name, runs it over in her mind._ Marielle _. It sounds almost right._

 _The old woman—her_ grandmother _, how strange!—smiles, a little watery. “I’ve come to take you home.”_

Home, _Marielle thinks, turns the concept over and over in her mind as she’s discharged, as her grandmother sets up appointments for physical therapy and sorts out insurance._ Home.

It takes three days before Combeferre texts them, three days of living under Enjolras’ worried eyes, while Courfeyrac stays at Combeferre’s to make sure the man eats.

When they reenter the apartment, Combeferre is waiting for them, seated at his kitchen table, looking like he’s about to fall into his coffee cup. Courfeyrac is perched on one of the other chairs, fiddling anxiously with her hair, watching him carefully.

"Combeferre?" Joly asks, worried. There’s suddenly the sharp smell of rubbing alcohol in the air, and Combeferre looks up, clearly exhausted, but manages to smile regardless.

"I’m fine Joly. I just didn’t expect this to be as fruitful or as difficult as it turned out to be. Sit down."

His voice is rough, but he doesn’t seem particularly scattered, so he’s probably slept at some point. They sit.

A small black box, not unlike one jewelry would be kept in, sits in the middle of the table. Taking one last gulp of coffee, Combeferre opens the box, and removes two gleaming rings, setting one before each of them.

"I don’t know if it’ll work, no one’s ever done this before. But I had to try. The similarities, I worked them into the metal. They’ll try to call her back to you. And then she can make her own choices."

Bossuet picks up his ring, turning it over and over in his fingers, before trying it on. It fits on his left ring finger like it was always meant to rest there and Joly does the same.

Combeferre’s eyes are bloodshot, but still sharp enough. “There might be some side effects, but I don’t know what they’ll be. It shouldn’t be anything harmful, but let me know, in case something’s gone wrong.”

Joly nods for both of them.

Courfeyrac interrupts, her voice low, “You should probably not explain about them either.”

Bossuet raises a curious eyebrow and she shrugs. “It’s a little bit too close to enchantment for most people to be comfortable, I think. Combeferre doesn’t agree, but the precise legalities don’t matter if the rings are destroyed.”

They both nod.

If they lose this chance, what’s to say they’ll get a second chance at calling their beloved home?

_Living with her grandmother is strange, but Marielle adjusts easily enough. After all, she’s never known anything else._

_And if the house sometimes feels more like a prison than a home, if her grandmother is more like a stranger than someone she’s known since childhood, well, that’s the amnesia talking._

_Her grandmother cares for her, drives her to and from her physical therapy sessions until her therapist says she’s fine to drive. She doesn’t ask much of Marielle, just simple household things, and she encourages it when Marielle starts to look for a job._

_It’s easy enough, and they soon settle into a quiet routine. They eat quiet brunches together before Marielle goes off to work at the local coffeeshop and her mother goes to appointments with her clients, Marielle picks up anything in town that her grandmother asked for in the evening and they cook and eat dinner together._

_Usually it’s thoughtless._

_But Marielle sometimes pauses when writing her name, just after the first letter, and she has to_ think _, what is her name? And when she finally remembers, sometimes it looks too short and not nearly fierce enough._

 _And sometimes she looks out windows and feels like the female lead in a romantic comedy, but there’s a phantom ring on her finger and a calling, like a string attached under her sternum, sweet and fierce like moonlight, and she_  wants _so badly._

_But her grandmother needs her, and this is the only life she knows, and practicality wins out._


End file.
